Even the most committed lover of long odds would not have bet on Depeche Mode still being this big when they first tinkled their way into the charts over three decades ago. The smart money would probably have been on them now playing, at best, to a medium-sized Marc Almond-style devoted audience or, at worst, joining nostalgia packages alongside one-time fellow hipsters ABC. Yet here they were selling out two nights at the O2 Arena to a positively ecstatic, if possible arthritic, largely middle-aged audience.

Totnes indie-folk band Matthew and Me took the stage at Notting Hill Arts Club fresh from a stint at the legendary Rockfield. Like many other bands to have recorded at the Welsh studio (which has hosted everyone from Black Sabbath to Coldplay), they seemed energised by the experience, their melodies injected with a passion and confidence, and an overall sound that carries a hint of Sigur Ros with its swirling keyboards, guitars and vocal harmonies.     

For all the video projections and pyrotechnics that accompanied it, Muse’s entrance onto the Emirates stage last night was disappointingly anticlimactic. This was partly because there was still so much daylight in the stadium but, mainly, it was down to there being so many empty seats. Maybe earlycomers had been driven to the bar by support act Dizzee Rascal’s constant refrains of "let's go fucking mental." Or possibly it was just a bad day on the tube. Whatever the truth, the stadium felt horribly devoid of any kind of atmosphere. It was going to be an uphill job to conquer it.

Picking five creatively significant years was quite a smart way of tackling the huge career of David Bowie, though you could argue forever about whether producer/director Francis Whately had chosen the right ones. What about 1969 and the Space Oddity album, or 1970 and The Man Who Sold the World? How about a really bad year like 1987, which gave us Never Let Me Down and the egregious Glass Spider tour?

Rodion G.A.: The Lost Tapes

Neko Case wasn't about to launch a Yeah Yeah Yeahs-style pre-emptive strike aimed at the Village Underground's amateur camera-wielders. She doesn't mind the odd photograph, she said; just don't try to film her. It makes her feel a little uncomfortable. Didn't we all use to just remember?

Almost before the dust has settled on their globe-spanning collaboration with New National Theatre Tokyo, National Theatre Wales embarks on a very different, if no less ambitious, partnership with the mercurial synth pop duo Neon Neon. The sometime project of Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys and producer and solo artist Boom Bip, Neon Neon have written their second concept album (the first, Stainless Style, was a biography of John DeLorean); this is another life story, another sharp, warm, joyous record filled with snappy bass turns and raise-the-roof keyboard riffs.

Steve Earle is country music's great polymath - short story writer, playwright, novelist, activist, actor, oh yes, and singer and songwriter of some of the most acutely intelligent and literate songs in contemporary country. He's adept at evoking the human cost of American history, American politics and the lay of the promised land, and on his latest album, The Low Highway, the first song takes a long, slow panning shot of the body politic. It’s not in great condition. Happily, though, Steve Earle’s muse is.

Imagine the rising and falling piano cadences of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Then plug the gaps between each note with any of those which may have been encountered on the path to the next. Once that’s done, ensure that the playing is constant with each note bleeding into the next. Mesh the result with a similar composition played at the same time and you have some idea of how Lubomyr Melnyk’s “Windmills”, his final piece last night, sounds.

Scott Walker: The Collection 1967-1970